Saturday, March 30, 2013

hyper-vivid distorted consciousness

In January or February of 1993 I awoke from a sound sleep and looked out my bedroom window to see five spindly gray aliens walking towards my house. This sighting lasted, maybe, less than 20 seconds.

This happened over twenty years ago. Since then I’ve written about this, drawn pictures and wrestled with the implications. I did a long post where I tried to honestly express the strangeness this memory. At the core of this experience was a very real change in normal perceptions, a kind of distorted consciousness. I try to describe this odd feeling in detail when I initially wrote about the overall experience (linked HERE).

It felt dreamlike, but it was different than any other dream I’ve ever had. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote:

This memory is strangely vivid in a way that seems entirely different form a normal state of mind... weirdly quiet - sort of a pressurized fish bowl - the deepest part of my psyche is displaced and moved to the forefront - the normal thought chatter in my head is turned off - maybe - kinda - sorta...

A distinct warping of my psyche, whatever that means... because this strangely vivid state of mind was so weird, I do not fully trust this memory.

This distorted feeling has a flavor that is absolutely distinct. Attempting to describe it in words would only hint at the sensations. All I can say is that what I felt was unmistakably unique. I have made a very real effort to ask other UFO abductees if they have ever experienced this altered state of consciousness. I've had conversations where we describe what I feel is the same exact distorted sensation.

I’ve had three other experiences that seem to indicate to me that what happened in 1993 wasn’t a dream.

One event took place in January of 2001. Again, I had this exact same feeling while waking up under extremely bizarre circumstances. The story is complex and it was written up a long and detailed post (linked HERE).

A funny dream with a little UFO

Another example took place in the summer of 2008, the same feeling manifested itself within a dream. This is actually a funny little story and it fits neatly into a little subcategory I’ve been calling my reassuring dreams. I went through a phase where I would have very vivid dreams where a lesson or example would be conveyed within the dream narrative.

This dream has me interacting with a small flying saucer and as I moved closer I could feel the sensation of the oddly distorted reality. I could control it by moving in close and backing away. Again, this feeling was exactly the same as what I experienced in 1993. I posted and illustrated my memories (linked HERE).

a hyper-vivid experience inside a tent near Dolores Colorado

Finally, I felt this sensation again while floating up out of the tent during an event in 2010. Of all my odd experiences this one seems to scream UFO abduction. I wrote about this (and all it’s associated synchro-weirdness) in a series of posts with illustrations (linked HERE).

So, I’ve had four very distinct experiences with this odd sensation, each connected to something very strange. After the event seeing the aliens out my window in 1993 I just dismissed the whole thing as nothing more than a weird dream. It did feel dreamlike and denying the implications seems understandable given my life at that point. But since then I’ve had three other experiences where I felt that same distinctive feeling making that outright denial almost impossible.

At this point, 20 years later, I’m at a point where I must conclude that the event in 1993 really happened and it wasn’t just a dream. I say this not because of my very clear memories of that night, but because of the follow up experiences.

This has been a pattern for me. I will deny the implications of a defining event, but later come to accept it’s reality because of a series of intertwined experiences. These seem to come in the form of synchronicities, psychic flashes, vivid dreams, lines on maps or owl interactions. My sense is that the universe is showing me something, and if I don’t acknowledge the significance there is a follow up bunch of weird experiences that force me to reexamine the deeper meaning.

(a little bit more)

I have never written about this one tiny aspect of the 1993 event because it was so hard to justify. The way I initially explained the distorted feeling came almost as a reflexive response. Here’s what I told myself:

You know that feeling when you are a little kid driving in the car with your parents and you fall asleep and then wake up where you didn’t expect to be? That’s what this felt like.

That description seems to feel close. I am picturing myself as a little boy falling asleep with my forehead against the car window while on a long drive with my parents. The steady droning of the car will induce a sort of vivid dream-state where I could visualize looking out the window at the passing scenery, but if I opened my eyes the view wouldn’t match what I was dreaming. Now, this might easily reinforce that it was nothing more than a dream. But, the more mysterious implication is that waking up in a car where you don’t expect to be has the distinct flavor of a missing time event.

12 comments:

Anonymous
said...

About the driving in the car thing - that's cool you bring that up! I've never heard anyone mentioned something like that. This happens to me very often!

When you say you are sure that something was not a dream, what was it then? Real? See the illusory dichotomy there? Just because something isn't a dream doesn't make it "real" in the sense of waking-consciousness right-hemisphere real. A mixture of both? The vague territory of the liminal!?

The *OZ Factor* implies the odd changes in the world around the witness. Most people describe an eerie form of silence.

What I am describing is a distorted form of conciseness. The *warping* seems to be within my own mind.

But YES, it is related, and maybe even the same thing. Describing these things is so difficult. No need to separate these into two divergent columns, I feel that it could be *both-and* rather than *either-or*

>"The steady droning of the car will induce a sort of vivid dream-state where I could visualize looking out the window at the passing scenery, but if I opened my eyes the view wouldn’t match what I was dreaming."

Sort of like a cognitive dissonance.

I tend to experience that when I'm having ultra-vivid dreams that take place in the environment of my own bedroom, which causes me to imagine I'm awake, when I'm actually asleep --kind of the opposite of lucid dreaming I guess, but sometimes I do realize I'm dreaming.

I just had one of those dreams just last night. It involved a small triangular UFO outside my window. It shook me up so much the 1st thing I did when I woke up was to Tweet how my dreams are becoming so 'Inception-ized' it's becoming harder to tell whether I'm awake or asleep. But then things turned even more freakish when my friend Greg Taylor replied to my Tweet in jest, because at that moment I remembered that Greg had *also* been in my dream, but I'd forgotten about it!

Regarding the distorted consciousness, I'm wondering if you or anyone else reading has "dreams" of high strangeness that are accompanied by a buzzing or humming noise that is kind of stomach churning and with some ineffable feeling of dark oiliness (not a pleasant sensation).

since around the mid-1990's Ms. Randles has written that the eerie silence, etc. experienced by witnesses prior to/during these encounters are indicative of an altered state of consciousness on the part of the witness(es). So, in her useage it's all part of the same thing.

IT IS very hard for us to describe - because our culture denigrates all states of consciousness except the 'consensus trance' or blandly material. Science is just now realizing the vital importance of sleep - hello, you don't get it you die, no matter how dangerous it is to be so vulnerable for hours every day.

This is one reason i feel that witnesses studying various states of consciousness thru meditation, dreamwork, various types of yoga could be quite beneficial. All these practices involve fine-tuning your knowledge of various states of consciousness. Many of these practices also have systems of vocabulary, some of which could provide us with at least some start of a framework for discussion.

I'm quite sure your state of consciousness when you saw the creatures in the yard felt extremely distorted compared to your humdrum regular state of mind and emotion. But you very well could have been more observant of 'things as they are' at that moment. Who's to say your perception was 'distorted' then, given just how much we do not know? I wouldn't claim to have a clue. happy day, steph

I have read Marc Davenports explanation He makes a good case that time is distorted and that accounts for the eerie quiet. So (in his version) it's not conciousness but a realm around or near the UFO that gets distorted.

I would agree with the "both/and" side of things. I feel that the actual, physical zone around a Fortean/Paranormal event/encounter is shifted. (My husband has recorded sudden silence on tape just before a strange occurrence on a night with birds and insects and dogs making a huge, seasonal racket in rural Ohio for instance.) So even without a witness, the zone is changed temporarily.

However, perception and consciousness seems also changed, into being, as Mike calls it, "HYPER REALITY" and I think that is accurate. Its like the way one perceives time is slowed, charged with significance, and senses are extra sensitive. In addition, ability to focus is increased greatly, and the normal "monkey chatter" of the conscious mind goes silent. End result? YOU PAY ATTENTION!

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